Perpetual Night
by a-mild-looking-sky
Summary: RJ Macready has survived the disaster at Outpost #31. He has survived the extreme cold. But now, with perpetual night falling in Antarctica, another outpost has gone silent. The horror is not over yet. [Sequel to the events of The Thing]
1. Prologue - Wreckage

**PERPETUAL NIGHT**

 **PROLOGUE: WRECKAGE**

The whir of the helicopter blades echoed throughout the frozen wasteland. Lake had kept the engine running, ready for a quick escape. No one wanted to spend more time than they had to here. All intended to conduct a quick check of Outpost #31 and then return to their own base. It was bitterly, remorselessly, cold and the perpetual winter night was coming down quickly and unstoppably. Darkness was wrapping the monotone vista in a black cloak. Stars struggled to penetrate through. Winds gathered in the distance, prepared for a violent assault. There was nothing friendly or beautiful about Antarctica at this time of year. And it would only get worse from here.

Weak torches and sputtering flares split the shadows. Charley tried to peer beyond the red pools of light surrounding the meagre crew. Scattered orange wisps danced ahead of them. They looked like the remains of a dying fire, churning up its final breaths. Now that she thought of that, she realised there was a faint acrid smell on the breeze, growing stronger. Above the sharp freshness of the ice and the cold sweat, there was something else. Smoke. Ash. The lingering traces of gasoline.

The team walked faster. A fallen sign announced their arrival into the American camp.

With an acute stab in her gut, Charley realised that was the only recognisable thing left.

Smouldering, blackened husks bled into the night. Their fractured remains scattered about the ice, thrown this way and that. Snow had been dredged up in great drifts, piled up around the unsteady foundations. As Charley swept her flare across the desolate sight, she spotted holes in the ground, as if something had fallen down or pierced through from below. Everything had been destroyed. She could not even recognise the individual buildings anymore. They had tumbled together - one huge smoking mass of jagged, burnt-out shells standing where the outpost once had. What the hell had happened here?

Next to her, Olander gripped his gun tighter. The weapons had been a precaution only, but now, Charley was glad they had brought them. The shadows seemed tighter, the breeze colder, the winter stiflingly oppressive. Getting closer, the remnants of the camp looked more and more ominous. They were being lured in, horror and curiosity slowly getting the better of them. What they would find here, she couldn't even begin to imagine. Wild stories threatened to undermine her scientific mind. She tried her best to ignore them.

Up ahead, Delaney was the furthest into the outpost. He stood, knee-deep in the thick snow, glancing around. The night had drawn far enough back to reveal most of the site, but there were still blind spots. Worse could be lurking there. "All of you!" he called, trying to retake command of the situation. "Search for any survivors!"

Survivors? Charley thought. It's 40 below zero and we don't know what went on here. Who would have the strength, or even the will, to survive this?

And yet she joined the search. Staying close to Olander, she wound a path eastwards, stepping carefully through the debris. Some of it had been buried already in the falling snow. Given long enough, the continent would reclaim these buildings and embrace them in the ice. Maybe that would be for the best. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know what had happened. Some things were better left alone. From the moment they had got radio silence when trying to contact Outpost #31, she had had a bad feeling about it. Something told her this wasn't just a storm or an accident.

Her flashlight leaked over the remains. Pockets of fire still burned, but there were patches of darkness where even the stars did not shine. Charley looked around, keeping Olander within her sight. The meagre wreck of a shed or something - she couldn't tell - was emerging out of the night. She let the barrel of her gun go first into the shadows. Her torch flickered for a moment and she smacked it to keep it shining. Distracted, her feet hit against something. Before she could stop herself, she was stumbling and falling into the deep snow. Her heart drummed as she span around and aimed blindly.

Olander must have heard her cry. Heavy footsteps crunched as fast as he could go in this weather. "Charley? You alright?"

Charley inched forward to whatever she had just tripped over. It was not moving. She scrabbled for her flashlight and shone it down onto the inert, dark form. "Holy shit -" she breathed.

Olander appeared at the entrance to the shed. He paused for breath. "Is that a - is that a person?" he panted. Charley set down her gun and brushed her hand across what she assumed was its head. She pushed back a mass of hair, stiff with ice. The man's face was a deathly pale, his beard almost as white. He was lying, half-curled up, hands frozen around a whiskey bottle. Charley knew it was probably futile, but she felt for a pulse anyway.

"Jesus -" She pulled back, staring up at Olander. "He's still alive."

* * *

 **A/N: So after watching The Thing for the first time a few weeks back, I literally have been heads over heels in love with it. I don't know why I've not seen it before as it is *exactly* the kind of film I love. I can't get enough of it or Kurt Russell tbh. RJ Macready is probably one of my new fave characters of all time ~ So I really wanted to write a fanfic based around him. This is my idea for what happens after the events of the Thing, influenced by a sort of Aliens plotline and HP Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness. And I know this prologue makes it out to be that these are going to be major POV characters, but don't worry, they're not. After this, it'll be all about Macready ~~**


	2. Chapter 1 - Thaw

**CHAPTER ONE: THAW**

Mac's hand shook as he clutched the Petri dish. The blood shimmered sickly, hissing a little as he dragged the heated wire through it. Himself. Windows. Copper. Clark. All human. On the couch, still tied-up, Palmer, Nauls, Childs and Garry watched. The rope kept tightening as they twitched and squirmed impatiently. Garry thought this whole test was bullshit, and he wasn't the only one, Mac knew. But the suspicion and the paranoia was driving Mac crazy. It was driving them all crazy. When he looked at his colleagues on the outpost, he didn't see men anymore. He saw those things, ready to reveal themselves in a gut-wrenching geyser of green blood.

He had already killed three people. Only two of them had been assimilations. He didn't want any more surprises.

Palmer could not even meet his eye as he picked up the dish marked with his name. But it was Garry who Mac glared at suspiciously. He was going to test him last. Garry was the only one who could have sabotaged the other blood banks. Not entirely subconsciously, Mac kept the flamethrower aimed towards him. Its blue fire warmed his frozen fingers as he held the wire up to it. He expected nothing from Palmer.

A thick, amorphous mass suddenly burst from the dish. Mac heard it shatter on the floor. Red streams took on a life of their own and vanished beneath the stacked tables. Everyone turned to Palmer.

He shuddered and shook. His mouth opened, gaping and gaping impossibly wide. Eyes bulged and groaned, about to pop right out of their sockets. Mac stared, listening to Childs, Garry and Nauls scream as the flesh began to peel off his face. The pallor of his skin was replaced with gurgling, flowing blood, gushing over his convulsing body. A skull, soaked in scarlet, penetrated through. Childs and Garry tried to manically squirm their way out of the ropes. Growing more and more inhuman, the Palmer-Thing writhed. The floor broke beneath its feet. With a grotesque wail, it leapt and attached to the ceiling, dribbling sick trails of gore. Mac fumbled with his flamethrower. It gargled petulantly. Heart thumping, he tried in vain to stop it from jamming.

Windows was paralysed. He gazed, stricken, wide-eyed, up at the creature. Mac shouted at him to blast it. But not a spark came from his weapon. The Palmer-Thing dropped down, towering above him. There was enough of Palmer left to recognise what it had once been. That was the worst part of it. Windows couldn't kill him. Mac struggled with his flamethrower but could only watch as Palmer's pulpy head split apart. A thick tentacle burst out and lassoed Windows' throat. He was torn and shaken like a little rag doll. His terrified cries only stopped when his mauled body was thrown violently against the shelves.

Now, the Palmer-Thing turned to Mac. He reached behind and smacked the gas tanks on his back. The flamethrower would not obey. The thing took lumbering, squelching steps towards him, unnatural tentacle whipping the air. Mac hit the door. His weapon only managed a pathetic wink of fire. It did not even make Palmer flinch. Its limbs reached out and clenched around Mac's arms. The flamethrower clanged onto the floor. Mac fought bodily but the thing was too strong. Childs, Garry and Nauls could not raise a hand to help him. The creature lacerated and mutilated him without thought or mercy. Its tube forced its way into his mouth, chest peeling back to unveil another awful extension which punctured Mac's stomach. His head smacked against the door in a rush of blood. The last thing he heard was the eerie, bone-splitting scream of the thing.

Mac awoke with a rattling gasp, sitting bolt upright. Cold darkness hit him. That wail still echoed in the cramped space. He thought he saw tentacles writhing in the shadows. It was just the ache of the corrugated iron on top of the shed, and the trails of ropes hanging from the shelves. He took a breath and damned himself for panicking again. Blindly, he searched along the bench beside him, knocking a toolbox to the floor with a deafening clatter. He found the small lamp. It lit for a second, then fizzed and died. The tiny flame of a rusty lighter was his only illumination. He used it to reach for his whiskey bottle. It was the only thing he had been found with at the outpost, and he was not shattering it accidentally on the floor.

He drank deeply, leaning back into the camp bed. He could feel the hard floor beneath the thin covers and the constant whisper of a draft from somewhere. This dusty, messy tool shed was the only place they had had available to stuff him into. The rest of the beds on Outpost #26 were taken by pissed-off, freezing-cold scientists - even more pissed-off now that their new arrival had shown up. Mac had upset their little balance. They had dragged him in, half-dead, coated with icicles, and they had all flocked around, curious at first. Now, they were happy to lock him away out of their sight. Mac couldn't deny he was happy too. He dreaded the questions that would come. All he wanted was to let them make their decisions, talk amongst themselves, and then ship him back off to the States. No more complications.

He knew that was wishful thinking. The past days would be dug up again, the ice would thaw and no one would believe the truth it uncovered. Mac wasn't sure he could ever leave it behind. He would be trapped here, in mind if not in body, frozen amongst the Antarctic waste, the loneliest place on earth.

He took another long swig, and relished the burn. Maybe it could sear away all the jammed, ugly memories in his head. Or maybe it would just addle them even more. He needed a clear head for the days to come. It wasn't over yet.

As if to prove that point, a dull whirring reverberated over the shack. Mac pulled himself from the bed, stretching aching muscles, and staggered to the window. Lights floated in the sky, drawing closer to the outpost. A cluster of figures hurried out to meet them as they circled, hovered for a moment, then descended. A sleek helicopter landed on the bleak snow, blowing up drifts of white haze. Mac made out the logo of the American Scientific Antarctic Program slapped on the side. Three people, bundled in thick coats, stumbled out. He knew they were there for him. Here were the questions: the prodding, poking and probing; the cover-ups; the blame. Mac would be in the centre of it all - the stranger dragged in from the cold.

He walked away from the window and returned to the cold camp bed. It would be a long day tomorrow, despite the falling perpetual dark. They would get their hands on him and open up things that would probably be best kept hidden.

* * *

"Okay. Roy James MacReady, in your own words, please tell me what happened at Outpost #31 during the recent incident. Take your time."

Mac glanced at the tape recorder, whirring quietly, on the table. Across from him, the man who had introduced himself as Bill Larsen, a legal liaison with the American Scientific Antarctic Program, waited patiently. With the empty room around them, and the window looking out over the corridor, Mac felt like he was in an observed police interview. Larsen had made no attempt to make him comfortable. His face was still flushed from the cold, and he had not yet taken off his thick coat. He was undoubtedly pissed that he had been made to leave his little office, and come into the field for once.

Similarly, Mac made no attempt to make him feel welcome. He fixed him with a firm look and sat back. He knew Larsen had been forwarded the brief statement he had made to the Outpost #26 manager when he had come out of the infirmary. But he did not know the half of it yet. Mac was not going to bend over and lie for him.

He took a sip from his glass - regrettably not the J&B from his little shed - and sighed. His breath curled in the cool air. "It all started when we got a visit from one of the other outposts," he began. "Swedish, Norwegian, I don't know. They were chasing after one of their huskies, trying to shoot it. Somehow, they ended up blowing themselves up, but the dog stayed with us. Our handler, Clark, looked after it. Me and Dr. Copper took a little trip out to the Norwegian station and found it wrecked to shit." Larsen glanced at the tape recorder, but Mac didn't correct his language. "The only things we could find were an ice block, shaped like a tomb, I don't know, and some weird half-burnt remains. We took the body back to our camp and it was like two humans, melted together, and then incinerated.

That night, our dogs started going crazy. I thought that new one had just upset them but -" Mac wasn't sure how to describe what came next. He knew Larsen would not believe him whatever he said. "It turned into something. I don't know what it was. Some creature, trying to look like a dog. We burnt it. It died.

Then we found something in the ice. Those Swedish had made tapes of themselves out in the snow, and me, Norris and Childs went to where they'd been. There was some kind of vehicle out there, buried in a crater which they'd tried to uncover. Some - spaceship or something, the kind of round UFO thing, like you see drawn about Roswell. I don't know, that thing must have crawled out, or got thrown out, or - Anyway, Blair tried to work it out. It tried to replicate the dog, form a perfect copy of it, and fool us.

Then it did the same to Bennings. Then Fuchs disappeared. I don't know what happened to him. Then Norris turned into one, and that thing took down Copper too. We came up with a test, to heat their blood, and see who was who. Nobody trusted anybody. It was good, you see. We didn't know who was a thing and who was human. Palmer was one of them and he killed Windows. Blair was infected too, but Blair was trying to build something, like he was trying to get home. He went mad before, tried to smash up the station, and we detained him. He got Garry and Nauls. Then I got him. It was only me and Childs left. Then this lot found me."

Saying it like that, it didn't seem real. He realised he had rushed through the second half of it, skipping from one death to the next. They had each been a human life and for one reason or the other, had ended up packed together at the end of the world. Mac hadn't known any of them before the assignment. Now, they were details in this tangled inquiry. He didn't tell Larsen all the specifics of what he had done to them. He hadn't even mentioned Clark. Clark hadn't been a thing, but he had died anyway - just like most of the others had, at the end of Mac's gun.

He waited for Larsen's response. The man looked at the tape recorder again, maybe deciding whether he was going to look stupid for documenting this weird tale. Then he shuffled his papers uncomfortably. He settled on a strained smile. "MacReady," he said. "We're not five anymore."

Mac frowned. "What?"

"Aliens, spaceships, shape-shifters? Come on. Am I supposed to believe that?"

Mac had expected this, of course. "You can believe what you want. It's the truth."

"Okay. Okay -" Larsen shuffled his papers again. That could get annoying. "Let's look at the facts. Twelve men, including yourself, are sent to the Antarctic, funded by ASAP. During the first week of winter, communications are compromised. Something happens in a neighbouring Norwegian outpost - I don't know what, that's not our business, but a fly-by of the area has shown the destruction there. Maybe a gas explosion. Over the next few days, something happens at your station. It ends with the outpost being completely obliterated."

"Yeah, I blew it up." Mac didn't flinch as he said it, but Larsen did.

"It was a multi-million dollar investment. Multi-million. Finance is already strained within the institute. You admit that you purposefully destroyed it?"

"No amount of money in the world could have saved you from whatever the hell was there. Blair, our lead biologist, said that it would take just over 3 years for the whole world to be infected if that thing got out. I killed it. I did you a favour."

Larsen averted his eyes awkwardly. Mac could see the frustration brewing behind them. "Right now, MacReady, I don't care about aliens or 'things'. I can't see them. They're not the ones breathing down my neck to get to the bottom of the loss of Outpost #31, and all the money with it. I care about the funds that you say you 'blew up'. All the work and time and dollars gone. Okay -" He composed himself again. "You want to know what I think happened? What the commission will think?"

Mac waited.

"I think that the isolation got too much for you. Months out here in the cold would make any man crazy. Maybe something happened, I don't know, something that sent you over the edge. The storm, or the lack of work, or maybe just paranoia. With the lack of corroborating evidence for your 'alien' story, you can't blame the commission for thinking that - well, you took your anger, or fear, out on your colleagues and then destroyed the evidence."

Larsen stopped, letting that sink in. Mac watched him, but still refused to react. It was a heavy accusation, even heavier considering how close to the truth it was. Mac had killed his companions. He couldn't escape that. But not in the way Larsen was insinuating. "You think that?" he asked eventually, calmly.

"I don't know. It's a possibility." He paused and glanced down at the papers again. He seemed to wrestle with the next question, as if wondering whether he should ask it. But he was a legal liaison - Mac was not the only person with questionable morals in this room. "You served in Vietnam, didn't you?"

"What the hell has that got to do with it?"

"Don't get defensive -"

"I wasn't."

"-I'm just trying to cover all the bases. This stuff will have to come up. We'll have to consider your background. Shell shock or -"

"Look. It's got nothing to do with that. I know what happened out there and I know what I saw. But, if I really did kill all those men, then why let me walk around here? Crazy people don't just stop being crazy."

"MacReady, don't make this any harder than it has to be." Larsen wiped a weary hand across his eyes. Mac noticed him shaking a little in the pervasive cold. "Okay, here is the awkward bit. Believe me, I don't want this to happen. But, pending further investigation, and based on the lack of evidence - and the accusations brought against you - we have no choice but to keep you under surveillance. You'll be escorted around the outpost - we're not going to lock you down completely, but for much of the day, you'll be confined to your living space. That is, until we can get you back to the States."

Mac almost wanted to laugh. The situation was so similar to what had happened with Blair. Back at the outpost, the suspicions and the fear, not to mention Blair's violent outburst, had led the rest of them to barricade him in the tool shed. It hadn't done a lot of good. Mac was sick of the paranoia. But, now he was mostly just tired and still so damn cold. So he said, simply, "fine."

Larsen was surprised at the submission. He seemed to stammer for the next words, then settled on a smile. "Well, I'm glad we can come to some arrangement. We can have the doctors keep checking up on you periodically, maybe some psychological assessment, but, until we get back -"

"Listen. I just want to go home. That's it."

"I understand." No, you don't, thought Mac. "We all want to go home. It's a godawful place out here."

He slid the papers away and concluded the interview. Mac knew he was free to leave now - but not really. He would be going from one locked room to the next. Maybe that was for the best. He didn't want to have to deal with the others' curious glances and questions. But before he committed himself back to that tiny, freezing tool shed, there was one more thing Larsen had to ask. "You said that you weren't alone in surviving whatever happened at your station?"

Mac nodded. "Yeah. There was me and Childs."

Larsen paused. He seemed to be turning that response over in his mind. "MacReady, you were the only person they found."

Mac didn't know what to make of that. If Childs had not been with him, he had either crawled away and survived, or died, or -

He couldn't think of it now. It would become another tangled thought stuck firmly in his head. The idea of repeating this scenario today again and again was already exhausting him. All he wanted to do was to get drunk and sleep. More and more, he was starting to feel unlucky that this station had found him, and he had not been left to freeze in the snow.

All around the outpost, the winter dark came down quickly. The sun's weak, bloody light had vanished beneath the frigid horizon. For now, they were all trapped.

(tbc)

* * *

 **A/N: So I know it took a while to update but I've been busy with some other things and writing. But tbh, this is one of my favourite things (no pun intended) to write at the moment. I really enjoy writing Macready ~ I have ideas for the next few chapters so I may try and update a bit quicker but work is so hectic right now. I've just been doing little bits and pieces of this fanfic over these last few weeks! Oh, and there will be many Lovecraft references in this story, starting with the names. So far, we've had 'Lake' and 'Larsen' both from At The Mountains of Madness, which always reminds me of The Thing!**


End file.
